


There's Something In The Water In Beacon Hills

by Chiomi



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Mates, Multi, Nemeton, Slow Build, Trans Allison, Trans Character, Trans Isaac
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-01-15 10:04:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1300942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiomi/pseuds/Chiomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.</p><p>-Clarke's Third Law</p><p>Derek knows within hours of starting his new job that they're mixing the two, and is almost as fascinated by the mix as he is by his new boss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [8tracks](http://8tracks.com/chiomi/there-s-something-in-the-water-in-beacon-hills) for the soundtrack to the story.
> 
> I can be found on [tumblr](uswe.tumblr.com).

Derek’s nervous going into the job interview, because it’s far enough from home that he’ll have to stay the night in a strange alpha’s territory, and the whole building smells of lemon and thyme instead of people or werewolves or the more layered chemical citrus of cleaning agents. Plus job interview, and he’s always been nervous for those. It doesn’t help that the guy interviewing him is ridiculously attractive, with long fingers and wide lambent eyes and hair that looks sex-mussed. Derek swallows, and answers the question about his favorite type of project to engineer.

Stilinski looks down at his notes and nods, satisfied. “And you can start the 18th?"

He’s - okay, he’s not floored, because he knew he was qualified for the job - but he’s pretty happy. “I’ve got the job?"

"Yeah, dude." Stilinski leans back in his chair, and Derek’s too happy about having the job to tell him not to call him ‘dude.’ “You’ve got the relevant skill set, and I think you’d be a good fit to our corporate culture. Starting salary’s seventy-five thousand, but we have a pretty comprehensive benefits package, and performance review after the first year. That work for you?"

"I - yes, definitely."

"Great," he says. “I’ll just go grab some paperwork from HR."

He levers himself out of the chair and, as soon as he’s out of view, Derek dives for his phone to text his mom. If he’s moving to Alameda, she needs to notify the local alpha, get permission for him to be here and set up a meeting. The company’s in McCall territory, and even the other Alameda County packs don’t know much about him, because he’s from up north somewhere and doesn’t come from one of the families and tends to keep to himself. It’s really important that Talia get permission sometime in the next two weeks, so that Derek knows whether he’ll be able to actually start his awesome new job.

Stilinski’s come back with a stack of paperwork nearly an inch thick and has only barely set it in front of Derek before the phone on the desk rings, one of those antiquated multi-line monstrosities. Stiles glares at it, then leans over and presses the intercom button and says, pointedly, “Erica?"

"It’s line three, Stiles," she says, perfectly smug.

Stilinski sighs, and releases the button. “Sorry, I have to take this. Take a look at the stuff" - he gestures vaguely - “while I do."

He picks up before Derek can reply, and says, cool and impersonal, “Stilinski."

It is with perfect, shocking clarity that Derek hears his mom on the other end. “I’m calling for a Mister McCall?"

"Since you’re calling this line, we can drop the pretense. He and his wife are on their honeymoon, I’m his second, and I’m authorized to handle things in his absence. What can I do for you? I’m in a meeting."

Stilinski sounds way more unfriendly now than he had at any point in his interview with Derek, and it makes him uncomfortable.

"Ah," Talia says, then pauses. “I’m alpha Talia Hale, and I have a beta who’d like to relocate to your territory for a new job, with your permission."

"Hale," he says, testing the word on his tongue as he looks at Derek where he’s frozen in place. “Well, since I just hired him here at Clarke, I think it’d be pretty rude not to let him live here. If you want to come to visit, email at least a week in advance, but yeah, we’re good."

He hangs up without saying anything else, and Derek waits for him to break the ensuing silence. Stilinski shoves a hand through his hair, then says, “Right, so your benefits now include running around outside Sausalito with the other wolves on the full moon, and Argent backing if you’re ever wrongfully targeted by hunters. You’ll also be provided with cologne from R&D which isn’t so much a present as a mandatory part of the dress code, because Scott’s the only one we disclose as a werewolf unless we absolutely have to." He rifles through the stack of papers and extracts two. “I’ll also grab different security forms, since you’ll be cleared for most of the projects, now."

Derek blinks at him. “Your alpha won’t object to you hiring a werewolf from a different pack?"

Stilinski smiles, all predator. “The alpha’s not the CEO. We’re from Beacon Hills, Derek. You’ll find we do things a bit differently around here."

Derek’s heard of Beacon Hills - of course he has, everyone has. His family had lived there before Kali Washington had decided to avenge an ally’s blinding and subsequent death by wiping out every hunter on the West Coast. But all that blood’s just background noise, because Beacon Hills itself churns out a whole lot of weird, even by werewolf standards. One of the old Druid families was based there, and even they could barely keep a handle on the banshees and witches and dryads that kept crawling out of the sometimes-literal woodwork in Beacon Hills. There were dark rumours that they’d helped, but those were quiet.

"I can see that," he says slowly. “Just so you know, I’m born, not bitten, and I’ve never had a lapse in front of a human, except, apparently, having my alpha phone. I shouldn’t need -"

"Let me stop you there," Stilinski interrupts. “It’s not about your control. We don’t use coercive methods on any of our human or werewolf employees. It’s a scent-blocker, because some of our clients are werewolves and some are other entities with a great sense of smell, and we’d prefer not to disclose how many werewolves are in the McCall pack or working here in general. And, if you could sign these" - he tapped a pen on the stack of papers - “and were still curious, I’ll be able to explain why."

Derek nods jerkily, and takes the pen. The first three pages, stapled together, are a job description, covering all the standards of pay and vacation time and review periods and expectations, and Derek barely skims it before he signs it. The second is a description of benefits, in duplicate, one of them noted as his to take home. It’s pretty comprehensive, though all of it more useful to a human than a werewolf. Derek fills in his alpha as beneficiary for his life insurance, and signs the copy to go to the insurer. He tucks the other copy into the folder he’d brought with him with the extra copy of his resume.

Next is the confidentiality agreement, which he reads carefully. He’s not allowed to talk about what he’s working on, he’s not allowed to talk about things other people are working on, he’s, interestingly, not allowed to talk about finished and in-production products unless they’ve been cleared by PR.

It’s restrictive, but if they do business with werewolves and other things that go bump in the night, that’s to be expected. He signs it without comment.

Stilinski’s silent through the whole process, doing something on his phone and glancing up at Derek every once in a while. It’s unsettling. Not because his new boss is younger than him; he’d been prepared for that when he applied for a job within an hour’s drive of Palo Alto, but because Stilinski’s eyes are almost beta-gold and it feels like he’s reassessing Derek. Derek tries to focus on the tax forms and ignore him.

The last form in the pile is an opt-in for the company directory, and he enters only his cell number, because he hates Facebook and prefers to leave it for pack to harass him.

He sets the pile on the desk right as the intercom goes off. “Stiles, your one o’clock is here."

They both glance at the clock on the wall, which still says it’s quarter to one. “Well," Stilinski says, “do you want to meet one of our recurring characters and go to lunch, or do you have something else to do?"

Derek hesitates, but no, he’s starting over, he can be a social person here, lunch is practically code for productive business meeting in California. “I could do lunch."

Stiles presses the button in the intercom. “Let her in, Erica. Mister Hale’s joining us for lunch."

A petite redhead strides in, face arranged in a carefully angry moue. “I don’t know why you don’t tell your bodyguard to just let me in, Stiles, it’s not like you’d ever say no."

"Derek Hale," Stilinski says, “meet Lydia Martin, mathematics student at Princeton and strangely biased against secretarial staff." He subtly emphasizes the last two words, which only draws attention to the fact that the busty blonde occupying the outer office is apparently his bodyguard. “Lydia, Derek’s our latest engineering hire, and he’s coming with us to lunch."

Lydia looks at him, cocks her head to the side as she assesses him, and then visibly dismisses him. “Fine. We’re going to Kamakura, because you really can’t get good sushi in New Jersey, and I’m going to not tell you that I’m getting the Wolf Prize, because theoretically I’m not supposed to tell people until it’s announced."

Stilinski grins broadly and rises to hug her. “Oh my God, that’s fantastic."

For brief, bewildered moment Derek wonders if it’s like a werewolf MacArthur grant, and then he remembers: prestigious Israeli math prize. “Congratulations," he says quietly.

Lydia pats Stilinski on the shoulder, and he lets her go. She looks pleased, though. “Thank you. Now come on, our reservations are for one."

Stilinski grabs his jacket and tells Erica at the desk where they’re going for lunch and that they’ll be back in an hour. She looks up at them and nods, and Derek takes a moment to try to catch her scent, curious if she’s a werewolf, too. He can smell hair product and antiperspirant and cosmetics and laundry detergent, but nothing that speaks to the woman wearing them.

It seems like pushing it, a bit, to be leaving the building barely before one and still trying to make the reservation, at least until Lydia leads them around the corner and the restaurant’s right there. The host seats them quickly and presents them with menus, and Derek stares at his. He’s never been particularly adventurous with food except how rare he’s willing to eat red meat on the full moon. When a waiter comes, Lydia orders a few things in perfect Japanese, then glances at Derek and, in English, adds a California roll and a cucumber roll, and notes that the order’s for all of them.

It’s a little annoying, to not be allowed to order, but Derek’s only had this job for twenty minutes, and Lydia’s his boss’s girlfriend or something. “So when are they presenting you with the Wolf Prize? Where’s the ceremony?”

She flicks one strand of hair behind her shoulder. “Israel in late May, as if anyone cares about finishing the semester with their undergrads.”

“Is Jackson going to need time off? Can I come?” Stilinski seems genuinely excited, and Derek plays with his water glass, just to have something to do with his hands.

“Neither of you are coming,” Lydia says witheringly. “I’m the first woman to win the Wolf Prize, do you think I want it implied I’m emotionally dependent on a man for support? You can come see me win the Fields Medal in two years.”

“I didn’t know they announced the winners so early,” Derek says, impressed but also slightly suspicious.

Lydia turns a poison smile on him. “What do you know about mathematical analysis, Derek?”

“Not a lot.”

“Then believe me when I say they don’t, but I don’t need them to, because this one is mine.” She’s disconcertingly intense, now, even for someone used to werewolves.

Stilinski reaches out and pats her hand, and Lydia sits back. She smoothes a lock of hair framing her face. The food arrives.

*

Derek flies back to New York the next day, and doesn’t even need to talk to Laura about what she’s going to do with the apartment: Cora’s there, and packing his clothes, and grins at him when he comes in.

It makes a certain amount of sense, since her modeling agency is in Manhattan and their parents’ house is in Babylon, but Derek still scowls at her, because she’ll totally have gone through his underwear drawer already.

Laura and Cora hug him in congratulations, and then help him pack his books.

Cora has already packed most of his underwear, leaving only the superhero boxers he’s had since high school. He’s pretty sure the worst part of it is that he has enough of them to last the two weeks until he starts his job.

He looks at apartments on Craigslist and the classifieds section of the San Jose Mercury News and ends up finding a house for rent, because despite the proximity to San Francisco, Alameda’s a pretty small city, without that many rental properties. It’s two bedrooms, and totally unfurnished, but he can deal with that. He’s pretty sure the place is easy walking distance to work, and it’s well within McCall territory, so he emails the landlord to talk about moving in.

There’s a family barbecue before he leaves, and he gets to talk about his new job, and since his mom already knows about Stilinski and the McCall pack, he can talk about how attractive and intense his boss is, even if he can’t talk about some of the other weirdness. His mom eventually gives up the interrogation, and everything is hugs and gentle teasing. When the full moon rises, they all pile on the too-small sofa in the family room and watch Riddick movies.

He flies out on the twelfth and goes right to his new house and puts down his bags and looks around, then grabs his overnight bag again and heads to a hotel.

The boxes of his stuff aren’t arriving for another day or two, and there’s no bed, and it smells weird. So the next morning he heads in to Oakland and gets a bed at a place where it’s all supposed to be handcrafted driftwood stuff. It looks kind of like the claws of dead things are going to be cradling him in his sleep, but it smells like ocean and polish and pot and power tools and the salesperson says it only arrived that morning and Derek says he’ll take it like a desperate man, because maybe if he hands his credit card over fast enough she’ll stop touching it. He has to get a mattress, too, which is kind of awful, and theoretically linens, too, because even though he has some stuff coming, he doesn’t have anything here.

While he’s in the department store, he gets a pot and a pan and a colander, too, and silverware, because everything in the New York apartment had been everyone’s, had been pack property, and he’s lived with pack ever since the dorms and never needed to buy things on his own.

He finds a New Age shop last, and picks up dried sweetgrass.

He smudges the whole house before the bed gets delivered, and then again once he’s set the bed up. It doesn’t make anything smell like pack, but at least it doesn’t smell like other people now, and bad things are swept away.

He walks downtown for dinner, and detours to the Clarke Security Technologies building to make sure he knows how long it’ll take to get there. It’s not a bad walk, and there’s a gym nearby, too. He’ll probably end up getting stuff for at home, so he can do hard lifting instead of relying on infinite repetition, but they’re an okay social space. He’ll have to see if he can find a community baseball team to join, since Clarke doesn’t have a team. It feels weird, to be planning some sort of life away from his pack, though he’s always known it was a possibility that he’d move away.

It’s not a new thought, exactly, that his family will stay his family but they might not stay his pack forever. He doesn’t like the thought.

He finds a German place to eat, and shops for furniture on his phone. It’d have been more convenient, of course, to order everything to arrive today, but he wanted a chance to walk the space and get a feel for it. It’s a failing for an engineer, to need the physical representation, but he doesn’t need it, per se, just likes it. Besides, it’ll give his scent a chance to settle in before more new chemical-smelling things are added.

The new bed is soft and comfortable and smells like a whole lot of nothing, but it’ll get better.

*

His stuff arrives the next day, and it smells like books and home and pack. Cora’s shoved one of her workout shirts in a box, and it smells like her. He smiles and folds it and puts it in the top of his closet.

There aren’t bookshelves, yet, to put his books on, but he piles all of them in the den anyway. He’ll set that up as an office, leave the second bedroom as a spare for if any of his pack get time and permission to visit. It’s only Thursday, and he’s got the whole weekend ahead of him, but he sets everything up as much as he can before he goes out. He likes order in his space, order that can be covered up with blankets and cushions and pack lounging on each other.

He realizes he’s picturing trying to keep order in the face of Laura-induced chaos, and promptly stops arranging things.

Reluctantly, he goes grocery shopping, because the rest of the furniture isn’t due until tomorrow. He finds a Trader Joe’s on his phone, and it’s right next to a Safeway, so he can stock up on staples. He walks, because he still has no idea what public transit’s like other than the BART, and it’s not that far. He stocks up on the basics and on piles of frozen dinners, because being an adult means eating whatever the fuck you feel like for dinner.

He has to get a cab back, because he’s gotten enough stuff that it’d be suspicious to carry the weight that far.

His place still looks like an unoccupied cave, but it’s getting there. He’ll even have a microwave tomorrow.

In the meantime, there’s a taqueria that advertises huge portions, and he eats a burrito that may actually be the same size as his head and looks at reviews of the gyms in the area. He doesn’t really like it: he’s never been solely reliant on his own judgement before. Even deciding on universities had come down to proximity to family, after all - though the fact that the Troy pack were kind of jerks had helped with that.

Derek pushes away the panic that rises at the thought of the distance: his alpha thinks this is a good idea, and it’ll be great for his career, and it’s interesting, and he’ll be meeting the local alpha soon anyway and he can deal, he can deal with it.

He goes home and works out until he’s tired, then showers and dries off with a towel that smells like New York.

The morning’s a horror and a half, because he wants to get in good habits, and it’s still a three hour difference. He drags himself upright and showers briefly and glares at the contents of his fridge and then goes out in search of coffee and breakfast. The furniture will arrive today, but no one’ll be delivering yet, not to houses.

Feeling vaguely more awake, he digs out his laptop and sits on his bed and dicks around for most of the day until the furniture gets there.

Setting up the house the way he wants it takes most of the afternoon, wearing on into evening. He doesn’t exactly have a lot of stuff, but there’s all this space to fill, now. His stomach’s what cuts him off, and he orders pizza to eat on his new goddamn couch, because that is how a couch ought to be broken in.

Saturday he finally finds a gym, and they’ve got fliers for community baseball. The season’s already well underway, but he can at least stop by or something.

Monday morning is hard, and gross, and seriously fuck time zones. He hits the gym, and there’s a smell there, faint and mixed in with all the others, that’s overwhelming in its perfection. Derek wants to follow it, maybe hit on the person it’s coming from, but he can’t tell directionality in the circulated air. He nods at the woman using the treadmill next to him when she stops, and says thanks to the guy who holds the door for him. It’s usually pretty easy to make friends as long as he can remember to actually talk. He showers and applies the cologne Stilinski had gotten him to his pulse points. When he does his left knee, his scent drops away, everything else thrown into sharp relief by contrast. It makes him feel unbalanced, but he deals with it: shoves the sense away and plays human.

At Clarke, the same woman is at the front desk, and buzzes him in when he waves. The tag just says ‘Harley,’ so he smiles at her. “Hi, I’m Derek, I’m supposed to be starting today. Which way to HR? I should probably pick up my swipe card.”

“Second floor, first door on the left,” she says, and he probably should have noticed when he was here for his interview.

He goes up and knocks on the open door, and the man at the desk looks up, a scattered expression on his face. The nameplate says Scott McCall, and it’s half-buried under loose paper and manila folders.

“Uh, Alpha McCall.”

McCall’s eyes flick to the door, and he takes three quick steps around the desk to close it. “You’re Derek, right? Did Stiles not - we don’t talk about that here, not with the doors open.”

With the door closed, Derek can’t hear anything beyond the room, just McCall’s heart and the dull thudding of the building itself. He’ll figure out why the building sounds like it has a pulse later. He’s on edge, a little, off balance, and he hates apologizing, but - “I’m sorry.”

McCall shoves a hand through messy dark hair. “No, I - Lydia’s in town, I can’t expect him to have been able to go through everything.”

Derek squares his shoulders. “Is it still okay that I’m here?”

McCall waves a hand dismissively. “Of course, that was Stiles’ call. Okay, first things first: you’ll have noticed the soundproofing. We don’t talk about anything supernatural except when there’s a closed door between us and the rest of the office. Part of that’s because not everyone who works here is in the know, part of it’s that Alyssa in IT also works for the Weird Squad and we don’t want to give her anything that’s not on Erica’s schedule. Wait, you’ve got Weird Squad in New York, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, faintly appalled that they’d willingly let a spy in if they’re doing supernatural security. “Why -”

“Don’t worry,” McCall interrupts, “we’re all safe. Stiles contracts out for the servers that we do important stuff on, and if you ever get assigned projects that she can’t see the notes for, someone’ll show you how to get around it. It’s super uncomplicated, since he had to make it simple enough for me to segregate portions of employee files. That’s also why we don’t talk pack business or werewolf stuff in general with doors open, or at staff functions that aren’t the full moon run. He mentioned the full moon run, right? Are you coming?”

“Uh, yeah, that was the plan,” Derek says. The idea of keeping someone he knows he can’t trust close to him makes him uncomfortable, a little sick to his stomach, though it’s not like he has any choice in the matter. He doesn’t run this show. “So I guess we don’t meet here?”

“No - here, I’ll give you my address.” McCall scrawls on a sticky note and hands it over. “Though actually I guess this next one is a partial eclipse, so Stiles might make that a staff party, since all of us can actually get drunk at least for a little while. But I guess the most important stuff for today is that we don’t talk wolf stuff with the doors open, and for me to show you to your office.”

McCall grabs Derek’s ID card and leads him downstairs and into a secure area. It’s nice, pretty sunny, open, with computer stations next to the work tables rather than clustered at one end, a tall blonde woman folded over coffee and something electrical with its guts spilled out that smells of plastic and ash and venom.

She stands, swipes her hands quickly on her slacks, and strides over to meet them.

“Isobel Lahey,” McCall says, “this is -”

“Derek Hale. We’ll be working together. Thanks, Scott, but I’ll show him around the lab.” Isobel grins, and shakes his hand. Derek can’t smell anything off her, not any more than he can smell anything off anyone else in the building, so the only things he can glean about her on initial observation are that she’s got killer cheekbones, a friendly smile, and an Adam’s apple.

“Nice to meet you, Isobel.”

McCall nods agreeably. “Okay. Derek, you know where to find me if you need anything. Isobel’s got something for you to start out on, and I’ll see you at the party.”

McCall leaves, and Isobel shows Derek around the lab: it’s fairly small, for the scale of operation Clarke apparently does, but it’s got good equipment, and there’s a well-stocked parts wall that includes a drawer full of requisition forms. “You can get anything you need.”

Derek raises an eyebrow at her. “Anything?”

“Anything,” she reiterates firmly. “If it’s illegal or dangerous to staff members, you’ll probably have to justify yourself to Boyd and Stiles - Vernon Boyd’s the Acquisitions department - but very nearly anything. You’re cleared, I guess - don’t tell me why or how - so I can tell you: we can get damn near any species you want of aconite, though it’s discouraged for general use because of the toxicity.”

Derek blinks. “Good to know.” He’d love to ask - what is she? Is she human or were or something else? Not being able to tell is going to slowly drive him up the wall, though at least he’ll know who the werewolves are at the full moon, and he knows Stilinski is human from the fact that he needs a bodyguard. Well, he’s pretty sure Stilinski is human. He might be.

Derek is going to lose his mind. “So what do you want me to get started on?”

Isobel shows him a perimeter breach alarm still in late design stages, and he gets started. It’s easy to sink into it, because all he can hear is Isobel’s heart and the building, and all he can smell is cleaning products.

By noon, Isobel needs to tap his shoulder to get Derek out of the zone. “Hey, you bring lunch?”

“Ah, no, I’d planned to go out.”

“Is it okay if I order sandwiches? Then I can show you the break room and you can meet other people.”

“That sounds great.”

Isobel whips out her phone and tells him it’ll be twenty minutes, and Derek stretches and goes back to work, poking at it kind of desultorily because there’s no time to get fully absorbed.

In the break room,  McCall is already eating with an over-gelled blond. He smiles to see them. “Derek Hale, this is Jackson Whittemore from Sales and Marketing.”

Derek smiles back, and sits with them, even though he’s not sure what Jackson is. Definitely not human, at least: nothing human has eyes that cold. He’s not sure what any of the other people in the room are. He’s not even sure what Isobel is. It’s going to drive him crazy. There aren’t that many people, so McCall introduces him around as they trickle in: Erica he’s met already, Mark in Accounting, Alyssa in IT, whose name Derek tries not to react to, and another handful of people whose names and departments he can’t remember. They sound less like actual departments than like Stilinski found someone good at something and gave them a job title, which is both entertaining and flattering that Derek’s now one of them.

He gets through lunch without stumbling over names, mostly by dint of not calling anyone by name at all, and spends the afternoon submersed in the same project. It feels like he’s made progress on it, done good work, but he has no idea what kind of metric Stilinski and Isobel will be holding him to, so he ends the day unsettled.

He walks home, then goes for a run, wanting to learn these streets the way he knew their neighborhood in Manhattan, the way he knew their neighborhood growing up.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Derek is bad at people.

Derek packs a sandwich the next day, and contemplates that he’s going to have to get one of those insulated lunchbags if he’s going to be brown-bagging it. The gym has that same elusive, perfect scent, and putting on the scent-blocker is just as disorienting. Isobel’s there, looking like she’s been settled in for a while, and she tells him to work on the same project as before. Alyssa from IT stops in with a smile and coffee for him.

Derek accepts it and remembers to smile, only a half-beat late. Normally he’d be able to tell if she were interested in him, but he can’t, because no one smells of anything. He knows what he looks like, obviously, but the alpha had said she was Weird Squad, and bringing him coffee is above-and-beyond, except if it isn’t, here?

When she goes, he scowls down at it. There’s not even any sugar.

Work is easier to settle into; he might actually get used to nothing smelling right. At least it’s not unpleasant. The heartbeat of the building, as weird as it is, is soothing, and makes it easy to sink into the project. He makes measurable progress by noon, and goes to lunch buoyant. That only lasts until Alyssa sits with him.

She’s pretty, sure, but Derek’s a wolf through and through: loyalty is paramount. But he probably shouldn’t know - anything, really. It makes him awkward and stiff throughout lunch, and that’s not who he wants to be, not here where he can be a new more social person. She’s sharp and witty enough that it makes him feel even more mired in awkwardness.

It’s a relief when it’s time to go back to work.

Isobel stretches at quarter to five, marking the nearing end of the day with a ferocious crack of her back. “Want to go out for drinks?”

Home has nothing but a smell that hasn’t settled yet and the familiarity of his Netflix queue. “Sure.”

They pack up and shut down and leave Clarke and its strange heartbeat. Isobel leads him to a Mexican restaurant and orders them two beers. When she orders for him it’s not quite the same as when Lydia Martin did it: it seems more like expedience than judgement of his palate.

Derek surveys the menu half a minute before Isobel breaks in. “Want to just get a fuckton of tacos? They’re really good here.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Isobel orders, and then leans in as the server moves away. “Okay, realtalk, is Clarke the weirdest place you’ve ever worked?”

Derek grins and leans forward to match her, because he loves being able to tell this story, and Isobel will appreciate the full horror of it. “Nope. When I was an undergrad I had an internship where the engineer who was supposed to be in charge of the program got arrested for murder the day before we started, and the manager who was left sent us things in Paint because he was convinced that it was the same as CAD and we were just lazy idiots who wanted expensive toys.”

“Oh my God,” she says, eyes dancing. “I don’t have any good internship stories, since Stiles dropped out to go full time in his sophomore year and had me working for him every spare minute.”

Derek doesn’t want to pry - doesn’t want to get himself a reputation as a gossip, really - but the boss is interesting. “So you know Stiles” - the name is awkward on his tongue - “from university?”

“Nah, we go back forever.” She tilts her head, and it makes her skin gleam in the setting sun, flashes off her eyes: makes her look like she’s weighing him. She probably is. “Me, Scott, Stiles, Jackson, Erica, Harley, and Boyd all went to high school together in Beacon Hills.”

Werewolf, then - probably all of them. Or, no, Stiles smelled human, and so did Harley, and it’s just everyone else whose scents he couldn’t catch. They’re the McCall pack, and he still doesn’t know what Isobel is, not for sure. “And you all ended up working in the same field?”

She makes a face, then shrugs. “We’re where we were needed. Tell me about New York. I’ve never been.”

The food arrives, and is delicious. Derek talks about New York between bites, and the homesickness of thinking about it on purpose is balmed by pleasant company. Isobel mentions college, a bit, and nothing about Beacon Hills. Derek can understand that - he wouldn’t want to talk about Beacon Hills, either, if he’d grown up there.

He doesn’t ask again about Stiles, even though he wants to know more about who he’s working for. His interest isn’t purely professional, and he’s just not ready to go there. He ends up hearing a lot about what a jerk Jackson Whittemore was in college.

*

The next morning, Derek gets in before Isobel, weirdly enough. It’s less weird when McCall drops in, just a few minutes before their official office hours start: Derek’s cleared out enough at his sisters’ behest that he knows how staged casual private conversations sometimes have to be.

“Hey,” McCall says, leaning against the closed door, projecting relaxation.

Derek eyes him. “I haven’t even been here a week.”

“Don’t politics suck?” McCall shifts, and shakes out some of the tension from his shoulders. “So Alyssa’s been interested in you.”

“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure not for Weird Squad reasons.”

McCall raises a quizzical brow. “Oh?”

Derek raises his own eyebrows in response, and looks down at himself.

“Oh,” McCall says, and has the grace to look slightly embarrassed. “Yeah, I can see it. You don’t think she suspects?”

“She brought me coffee once, and we had lunch once. It’s not like we’re having extended conversations about our innermost thought processes.” Derek knows he’s snarking inadvisably to his superior, to an alpha, but this is dumb.

McCall takes a deep breath. “Would you be willing to?”

Derek stills, down to his heartbeat. “What?”

“Look, you’re new, but -” he waves his hands vaguely, trying to encompass a lot of things, then settles. “Weird Squad isn’t good for anyone. Even the worst hunters don’t do experiments anymore.” McCall makes puppy eyes, which should look ridiculous on an adult, on an alpha werewolf who rose up from the depths of hell and trails rumour and power behind him. They don’t look ridiculous at all, though: they look a lot like a golden retriever who’s just been told bacon is a lie.

Derek caves like a souffle. “I can’t promise anything. I’m not - good. With people.”

McCall smiles like breaking dawn. “I think you’ll do fine.”

He leaves, and Isobel comes in so soon after that it’s not even subtly synchronized. She smiles and hands him a coffee, then about six packets of sugar. “You should probably bring in your own sugar - coffee’s practically air around here.”

“I’m getting that,” Derek says, smiling down at the cup. “Thanks.”

-

He’s an engineer, and he has a pretty good idea of what his job encompasses, but part of him had still thought that working for a security company would involve more feelings of danger and intrigue. The lack of smells is unsettling, but not fundamentally interesting. It reminds him a bit of when he’d been just starting to shift as a young teenager and his mom had circled him in mountain ash to block his supernatural senses so he could get some sleep. Not being able to smell things is inconvenient and unsettling like puberty, not like excitement.

Alyssa sits with him at lunch again, and he tries the whole flirting thing. It’s awkward - he’s awkward. He’s always been awkward. But she seems kind of charmed, and he can make himself sort of forget, a little bit, that she’s a danger, because she’s the kind of intense he likes. “Um,” he says articulately as they’re gathering their dishes. “I - would you like to go for drinks sometime after work?”

Her smile’s a little wicked, and he likes that about her, even if he doesn’t like liking it. “Yeah, that’d be great. Tomorrow?”

He wanders back to the lab kind of dazed - he’s got a date with someone bright and attractive and apparently disloyal to the bone, and he’s not sure how to feel about that. He spends most of the afternoon on computer modelling, and remembers none of it.

He goes home and makes dinner and works out more and then flops down on his bed to pretend to read a book and panic about getting involved in pack politics. He’s not good at pack politics. The last time he’d tried to date a werewolf Cora had nearly gutted someone on the subway.

Swallowing becomes - an issue, and he ends up standing at the sink slowly drinking a glass of water so he doesn’t throw up. He has such an awful track record at dating. At least he knows going in that Alyssa can’t be trusted.

He needs to not fuck this up. It’s not like his heart’s involved, but people’s safety is, and even if he could identify the wonderful scent from the gym, it’s not like that’d be an automatic date anyway. So this is just - a thing he’s doing. A thing he can do. It’s fine - hell, it could even be progress, if no one dies, and then he might be fit to date real people he actually wants to date.


	3. Chapter 3

Going out for drinks with Alyssa the next evening is an exercise in social awkwardness. Derek would’ve sworn that he wasn’t this socially awkward, before, but maybe it had been being surrounded by pack all the time. Actually, more likely it was that he hadn’t been dead certain that someone would be not only capable of but pleased to turn him over to the government for experiments.

He smiles at her, and tries to keep conversations to the things he usually uses - books, music, theatre. “Oh, I don’t really listen to music.”

“Oh.”

The pause is physically painful, and then they both start up at the same time.

By the end of the night, suffice to say that Derek has had better first dates, and it’s a sign of nothing more than Derek having problems that he’s had worse. He flops down alone on his bed and groans into his pillow. He stays that way almost a full ten minutes before he drags himself up to strip and brush his teeth.

In the morning, the luscious smell at the gym is a slap in the face. He wants it, wants the person who smells like that, but they don’t smell like sordid subterfuge at all and Derek has a _girlfriend_  now, or at least a person he’s seeing. He very carefully smiles at people in passing instead of sulking like he wants, and is thoroughly unsatisfied by his workout.

He meets McCall going in, and McCall claps him on the shoulder and asks, “How’d it go?”

Derek looks at his hand, startled. Not that there’s any scent mixing going on, because Derek doesn’t smell of anything, but it’s frankly weird to have a non-pack alpha touch him. “It was fine. I don’t - it’s not what I’m used to.”

McCall looks a little sad, but heads to the stairs going up, conversation clearly at an end. “I know.”

Derek nods to Harley and goes through to R&D. He has something new to work on today that he’ll have to fit in the development schedule: a shutoff valve for a composite seawall’s overtopping turbine that can be operated by an external lever. There aren’t that many details on it, but Derek suspects selkie clients. Possibly erroneously, but it’s more fun to not get it clarified.

-

Scott pokes his head into R&D late in the morning. “You’re coming to my place at 7, right?”

Isobel doesn’t look up from her sketch pad. “Yeah. I’ll bring chips and dip.”

“Oh, should I bring anything?”

Scott shrugs. “We could always use more beer. Allison’s doing fajitas, which means we’ll have more than enough food.”

Derek nods. “Can do.”

Scott leaves again, and Derek gets back to work, falling into the project. There’s nominally a security system that’ll be powered by the hydro generator, but this is so much broader than just the security system. Derek finds himself humming as he checks materials calculations, and hoping that they’ll get more broad projects like this. He likes incremental improvements, and hadn’t at all expected to be working on this kind of scope, but it’s deeply satisfying to make a disparate whole come together. Getting caught up means he leaves a little late, because he’s in too deep to notice Isobel pointedly rattling around at five o’clock.

He only surfaces when the heartbeat of the building fades, because the fact that he can hear a pulse at all is weird as Hell. He’s still got just barely enough time to grab beer and head home to shower and change before he goes to the party, so he packs up quickly to leave.

-

Meeting the alpha’s mate is sometimes a big deal, in the old families, because it means you’re meeting all the leadership in one place. It never has been in Derek’s pack, because his dad’s a born wolf, too, from an even older family than the Hales, and has lots of family to take revenge. For packs who don’t have that, though, most try to have only one of the alpha pair at a meeting with a new wolf, or any wolf who’s not completely trusted. Derek’s not sure what to expect of McCall’s wife, because they’re a weird pack. She might be human. Hell, it’d probably be rude to ask, and she might be wearing scent-blocker. California is kind of terrible.

His palms are sweaty when he rings the doorbell. McCall answers, and smiles at him. “Hey! Glad you could make it. Come meet my wife, Allison Argent.”

“I brought beer,” Derek blurts, raising the bag with the six-packs of local microbrewery stuff.

“Cool,” Scott says. “We’ll make room in the fridge.”

Scott leads him through their welcoming house to their big, airy kitchen, and introduces him to the resident sharp brunette with a pretty knife.

“Stiles says you’re from New York?” She’s chopping peppers without really looking, like the knife’s an extension of her arm and proprioception applies.

“Yeah, I lived with my sister in the city. You’re one of  _ the _  Argents?”

With a particular flourish of the knife, she sends all the peppers into a bowl. “Yes. Next in line, though; my parents thought they were raising a soldier for too many years for my mom to retire yet.”

He nods, impressed at the fact that the next in line for one of the most respected hunter families in North America is a member of a pack, and listens for more people approach. It’s awkward to be the first one to have arrived, especially since he’d rushed because he’d thought he’d be late. A single person gets out of a loud car, and Scott straightens from rearranging the fridge. “That’ll be Stiles - he’s usually the only one who’s anywhere near on time.”

Stilinski comes in, and shuts the door behind him, saying something cheerful to Scott. Derek can’t pay attention to it, though, because eddies of air through the house have brought the most perfect scent in the world straight to him: the elusive scent from the gym, something vibrant and right, and Derek has to try very hard not to whimper as Stiles comes into the kitchen. He tames his face to blankness: he’s not a good liar, not having grown up around werewolves, but he can shut down, having grown up hiding werewolves.

Scott makes what is probably supposed to be a slightly quizzical face in his direction. It mostly makes him look like a confused puppy, which is deeply endearing and not a little hilarious. Derek tucks away his smile, though, and Scott is distracted then anyway tucking Stiles’ ice cream cake into the freezer. Derek takes another cautious inhale, and yeah, that’s definitely the scent, and it’s even more intense all fresh and emanating from a person. He breathes in again, inhaling as much of it as he can, and he can feel Allison looking at him.

Hell. Stiles might smell like - like everything good in the world, but he’s Derek’s boss, and Derek has a girlfriend, and he’s only mostly sure that Stiles is even human.

It’s not the worst attraction Derek has ever had, but it’s pretty high on the list. There’s something else that niggles at him, about scents that are a perfect complement, but that’s a little ridiculous and his sisters would mock him forever. Erica and Isobel arrive next, and soon enough that Derek’s inability to socialize isn’t too awkward. He swears everything was easier in New York.

Lydia arrives with Jackson from Marketing when Derek has already given up on trying to make a good impression and is nerding out about Broadway with Allison. They mark the start of something, because Scott and Allison start encouraging people to grab food from the neat row set out on the counter. They all make their way outside, where lights strung around the yard and a couple of permanent-looking tables attest to this being a frequent gathering. Allison brings up a local radio station on her phone and sets it in a speaker dock, music spilling out softly.

They’re all stuffed and several drinks in when dark falls. A partial penumbral eclipse means that Derek’s feeling it a little, but mostly in that he doesn’t feel as awkward. That could be the company, too. Everyone’s in each other’s space the way pack should be, even though Jackson and Lydia and Allison are none of them wolves. As dusk settles in, Allison turns the music up, and Scott starts clearing the table. It’s strange to have an alpha - a True Alpha, no less - doing the bussing, but when Derek starts to rise to help Scott waves him back down. The moon’s peeking up over the horizon, and Derek can feel it in his blood, but it’s slow and sweet as honey. As they disperse from the table, he circulates into the kitchen to grab another beer. He hasn’t felt this relaxed in ages.

Jackson and Lydia start salsaing to the music, and it’s something to behold: they both move intricate and precise and in tune with the other. Derek - yeah, he’d rather just watch. Derek retreats to the sidelines, near where Stiles is lurking with a drink and his ridiculous scent.

Stiles smells a lot like beer right now, and his movements aren’t as sharp as usual. He smiles at Derek, and it’s a bit like the sun coming out. “Aren’t they great? I have no idea how I keep surrounding myself with all these gorgeous talented people.”

“Like calls to like?”

He barks out a laugh, then narrows his eyes at Derek as he falls silent. “Uh, thanks.” Stiles’ gaze slides away from Derek like he can’t look at him anymore, then takes another swig of beer. “So how’s everything been going?”

“Good. I think I’m making headway with the seawall.”

Stiles quirks a smile, but waves away his answer. “I’m not gonna grill you about work at a full moon party. You’re settling into your house? Managed to find furniture?”

“Oh, yeah - I’ve even got most of it unpacked. It’s kind of weird to not trip over a sister every time I turn around.” He watches Lydia and Jackson move with each other, Allison and Isobel joining them in dancing across the lawn in a far less coordinated fashion. “Do you have any siblings?”

Stiles gestures at the yard. “I’ve got my dad and the pack.”

Derek nods. His cousin Malia’s almost like a sibling because she’s pack, even though she’s a werecoyote and her dad’s been dead almost as long as Derek’s been alive. He draws in another careful breath through his nose, getting more of the scent of Stiles. It’s really not fair, that he smells this good.

“Don’t bother coming in to work on time tomorrow - it’s a Friday, and the rest of us will be late, too.”

“Okay,” Derek says, though he knows he’s not going to be hungover. It’s only a penumbral eclipse, after all.

-

Derek gets in late the next morning, but makes up for lost time by finishing up the seawall before lunch. Because it was a special project, he takes it up to Stiles directly. It’s as good an excuse as he’ll ever get, after all. There’s a black guy even bigger than Derek talking to Stiles quietly. He’s got a messenger bag emblazoned with “I am not a puzzle piece,”  and as Derek watches he pulls out several paper-wrapped packages.

Derek would listen in, but the everpresent soundproofing means he just watches through the glass as Stiles smiles openly and claps the taller man on the shoulder. They’re obviously close, and it sends a ridiculous frisson of jealousy through Derek. Just because he’s hung up doesn’t obligate anything on Stiles’ end, and it’s not anything that can happen, because Stiles is human and his boss.

Erica’s heels click on the floor behind him, and he feels a flood of embarrassment at being caught. He shifts to the side to make it look less like he was peering into the office. She cocks an eyebrow at him, and he clears his throat. “Isobel said I should bring the mockup up.” 

“Oh, is that for the -”

“Yeah, the seawall. I think I’ve built in enough in terms of surge protection and weatherproofing that a lot of our standard equipment will be able to slip in without extra modification, which should make upgrades easy down the road.”

She nods and surveys the cardboard model he’s built with interest. “I’ll let him know.”

Derek hesitates a moment, and Erica’s mouth quirks up in a quickly-suppressed smile. “I could show him some of the features in the mockup so that it’s easier to convey to the client?”

Erica snorts, amused. “Sure, knock yourself out as soon as he and Boyd are done.”

He smiles at her. “Thanks.”

The office door opens, letting out the tail end of a conversation Derek can’t quite parse. Erica holds out an imperious hand towards Boyd, and he takes it, lacing their fingers together. “Babe, this is Derek, the newest engineer. Derek, this is Vernon Boyd, acquisitions manager and lovebug.”

Derek snickers and nods hello. Erica’s set it up so shaking hands would be awkward, and he wonders why, because it had to be deliberate. “Nice to meet you.”

“You, too,” Boyd says, and glances at Erica.

She smiles and leans up to kiss his cheek. “C’mon, let’s get lunch. Stiles, Derek wanted to show you his etchings.”

Derek briefly closes his eyes, because of course that’s how she puts it. Of course. He opens them, because this kind of embarrassment only gets worse with delay, and Stiles is raising an eyebrow at him. “Uh, yeah, I have a mockup.”

“Then come on in,” he says, and Derek follows him helplessly.

The heartbeat he can’t turn off is louder here, like Stiles’ office really is the heart of the business, but Derek tries to ignore it as much as possible and get through his talking points without stammering. He mostly succeeds.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott ships it.

Stiles breezes through the office mid-morning the next Friday. “I’m headed out, going up to surprise my dad. You guys need anything before I go?”

Derek and Isobel glance at each other, and Isobel shakes her head. “Nah, we’re good. Have fun, and let us know if the installation materials need tweaking before we release for sale.”

“Cool, see you Monday,” 

Derek quirks an eyebrow at Isobel once they’ve got the lab to themselves. “He’s doing an installation on his time off?”

Isobel rolls her eyes. “Our fearless leader doesn’t take time off, Derek. And he tests everything out on his dad’s place; part of the agreement they have about Stiles staying the fuck out of Beacon Hills most of the time and the Sheriff staying there. The Stilinski house there is like supernatural Fort Knox, only with better tech support. The Sheriff’s office has a lot of the same protections this building does, too.”

Derek raises both eyebrows, impressed. He can’t imagine pushing around either of his parents like that, though he supposes it’s different for humans.

About an hour later, the heartbeat he’s been hearing for over a month, the one that sounds like the heartbeat of the building, starts moving away, getting fainter. It doesn’t fade completely, just drops so that if he weren’t startled into listening for it, he wouldn’t even notice. The only change at all is that Stiles has probably left the building, and Derek wants to drop his face into his hands and keen. He knows what that means. Everyone knows what that means. What it means is that his life is terrible, because Stiles is his boss, and human. Humans don’t mate for life, not really, not the same way, and there is no feasible way at all for Derek to bring it up without getting fired for sexual harassment.

So that’s it.

Derek has met his mate.

Derek is doomed to unfulfilling relationships and one night stands forever.

“Isobel, do you want to take the party wolfsbane out for drinks tonight?”

She looks at him quizzically. “What’s up?”

“Just -” Derek waves a hand. He’s not all that great with words: he’s better with things he can put his hands on. But he can’t exactly lay hands on some primitive mating drive, or on his boss. “Long week.”

“Sure,” she says, casual tone belied by the look she’s giving him. She’s a good friend, though, and they talk about things that notably aren’t work, or the people they know.

\--

Wolfsbane has a hell of a hangover, so the cleaning Derek had planned to do Saturday gets pushed off to Sunday when he’ll be able to stand the sound of the vacuum and the smell of Windex again. Instead he lays on the couch, splitting his time between reading and feeling sorry for himself. Werewolf healing kicks in eventually, and he feels more or less himself again by mid-afternoon except for a nagging feeling that something is wrong. But he already knows what’s wrong, so he goes on a run, hoping it’ll go away.

It doesn’t, not really, but Derek pushes it down and away and ignores the feeling of wrongness. His house ends up very, very clean by Sunday night, and then the feeling bursts like a bubble. That’s almost as worrying as the feeling itself had been, but he can at least set that worry aside as almost definitely irrational.

\--

Monday morning, Derek wakes up early and hits the gym in a great mood. His romantic life is hideously complicated, and he should honestly just stop dating Alyssa at all because he’s not good enough at subterfuge to deal with Weird Squad in his downtime, but it’s a beautiful morning and he loves his job, so he just feels good. He brings in coffee for Isobel, and is just settling in for the day when the office phone rings.

It hardly ever does, because people just stop by, and no one external has a reason to call them.  Isobel punches the speakerphone. “R&D, how can we help you?”

“I need Derek in my office now,” Stiles snaps, rage clearly audible.

Derek shoots an uneasy look at Isobel, who raises her eyebrows. “I’ll be right up, Mr. Stilinski.”

Even the way Stiles hangs up sounds pissed off.

When he goes up, Erica glares at him, and he has no idea why, but he is probably in really deep shit. His good mood evaporates.

Stiles is aggressively playing with a yoyo when he goes in, and says, “Close the door,” without looking at him.

Derek does, and then approaches the desk gingerly. “You wanted to see me?”

“Want to know how I spent my weekend, Derek?” he says conversationally, rage still below the surface, yoyo snapping audibly against his hand. “I went up to see my dad, have a nice cookout, pretend that he doesn’t live in fucking chaos for a weekend so that we could have a nice Father’s Day and I could renew the wards on his office. Instead, I got fucking kidnapped Saturday morning, and didn’t get out until last night. The kappa who had me said I smelled like Hale. I had a lot of time to think between beatings, Derek, but I couldn’t quite figure it out. So explain to me, Derek, why I apparently smell like you.”

Shit. Shit. Derek’s mind goes terrifyingly and terrifiedly blank. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m magic,” Stiles snaps, like that’s entirely irrelevant. “Tell me.”

Derek looks down, because he desperately, violently doesn’t want to fuck this up. “We used to live there, a long time ago. I guess it recognized the pack scent. You’d smell like me because of our proximity, if I had to guess.”

Stiles narrows his eyes at him. “That’s a lot of guessing.”

Derek closes his eyes, trying to think. He hasn’t touched Stiles, not really. But a mate bond might not need it - he has no idea. Stiles shouldn’t have any idea, either, and humans don’t feel pack bonds quite the same way. He can maybe get away with this, get away with only the lesser of humiliating explanations. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He makes himself look up. “We left because my uncle died, but we’d been there a long time. It was Hale land, and there might be some old-fashioned things that still remember.”

Stiles looks at him searchingly, then nods. "Fine. Get back to work, then. And make sure you're wearing your damn scent blocker."

\--

Derek’s more assiduous about the scent blocker, though he’s pretty sure it’s irrelevant. The only time he’s been around Stiles without it on is that one time at Scott’s house, and it was a week between then and the kidnapping. Normal scent would be long gone by then unless Stiles had been wearing the same clothes, still dirty. That seemed unlikely, so it had to be something more indelible than normal.

Alyssa stops by the office, and he asks her out again, but there’s something small and miserable in it.

There’s something even worse about the date itself, and at the end of the night she pats him on the arm. “Let’s not do this again, okay?”

The smile on his face is the most natural it’s been in two weeks, and he can feel his dimples crinkle. It’s probably terrible, but he’s just so _relieved_. “Yeah, sorry,” he says. He probably doesn’t sound at all sincere, but he doesn’t care. She’s probably a perfectly fine government operative, but he doesn’t like her, and if she’s the one putting a stop to things he’s not flagrantly disregarding a request from the local alpha or making anything awkward at work.

He still drops her off, because humans after dark, but as soon as she’s in the door he texts Isobel in victory. Derek would normally text one or both of his sisters, but that would require letting them know that he’s been deliberately getting close to someone on the Weird Squad, and he’s just been . . . glossing that over. Isobel is sort of almost pack, and she knows the whole situation, so she can understand his glee. She texts back a string of unintelligible emoji that seem generally enthusiastic and pleased, and he texts the colon parenthesis smile that’s about the limit of his emoji fluency. His phone turns it into a yellow ball anyway. He locks his phone and walks home feeling lighter than he has in days.

\--

The Buck Moon is on the Fourth of July, and it’s a penumbral eclipse, so of course Scott is having a party for the whole company. Derek wonders why they don’t just go somewhere public, wonders how Scott’s so okay with having people in his space, but they’re the McCall pack after all, and nothing about them is normal. Or, well, maybe as a true alpha you get to make your own rules.

Lydia Martin is in town again, blown in from the East Coast for a week according to Isobel. She stops in to R&D a couple times, gossiping with Isobel about people they know in common. Derek tries to ignore them, because he doesn’t care, but he can periodically feel the weight of Lydia’s gaze on him. She makes him vaguely uncomfortable, especially because he can’t tell what she wants from him. He doesn’t know what she is, and she has a place with these people that he never will. She also reminds him obliquely of his mother; she carries the same weight of inevitably finding out everything you least want her to and of unspoken expectation. It’s not fair from a relative stranger. So, while he definitely doesn’t _want_ to dislike her, he’s not precisely overjoyed to hear that she’ll be at the party, too.

Derek’s nervous about the party in general. He’s nervous because Stiles will be there, and he’ll smell like himself, and for part of the evening Derek will actually be able to drink. He probably won’t. He shouldn’t. Self-control is too important, especially with the possibility that one of the other wolves will pick something up with their enhanced sense or Lydia will pick something up with her seemingly enhanced ability to judge everyone.

He picks up more craft beer to take, since that’s socially acceptable and he hasn’t been given any specific orders to bring anything else. He also manages to time it better, arriving after Isobel and at the same time as Erica and Boyd.

He’d kind of expected Stiles to already be there, since Scott had said he was usually on time, but there’s no evidence of him. Stiles shows up twenty minutes later laughing with Lydia, wearing a tight grey Henley and jeans that fit perfectly. When he catches sight of Derek, he smiles. Derek would probably have been fine if he hadn’t smiled.

Derek smiles weakly back, and wishes the sun were down. It’s still early, though, too early to hide his blush at all. He joins Scott at the grill just to see if there’s anything he can do. He needs the distraction. “You need anything?”

Scott grins at him, happy and relaxed. “Nah, dude. Oh, did you bring Alyssa?”

“Um. No. I think she was coming on her own. Things are kind of . . . not. Happening. At all.”

Scott just nods, expression not fading. It kind of stings that he'd expected Derek to fail at what he'd asked him. “Does that mean you’re going to ask out Stiles now?”

Derek can feel the heat rising in his face from a violent blush and conversational whiplash. “He’s my _boss_.”

Scott nods again, face going the kind of serious that means he’s laughing at Derek on the inside. “Uh-huh. Totally, man. Which means that it’d be totally inappropriate for _him_  to ask _you_  out. Nothing about the other way around.”

Derek’s gaze tracks helplessly and unerringly to Stiles, to the only heartbeat that stands out from the sounds of the grill and the radio and the conversations everyone else is having. “You think I should?”

“I think you _definitely_ should.”

Derek swallows hard and looks away, staring at the coals in the barbecue like they’re the most interesting things in the world.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Fourth of July.

The sun started to set eventually, colors streaking high over the Pacific. Being in Alameda is, for once, central to everything. Derek knows there are fireworks scheduled for the USS Hornet Museum, and he’s pretty sure they’ll be able to see those in addition to whatever the neighbors set off. He thinks they might be able to see some of the stuff higher outside the Berkeley Marina, too. He avoids Alyssa as much as he can with the relatively little space afforded by Scott’s house and his avoidance of Stiles. He’s pretty sure, whenever he makes eye contact, that Isobel is laughing at him.

The sun finishes setting at almost exactly the same time as the moon starts to rise. The eclipse won’t start until later, so he can feel the pull of the moon like something wild in his blood. What his mother had told him, when he was young enough to hardly even shift, was that the feeling was from the moon whispering her secrets to all of the wolves. It was those secrets that let some of them change, and that was why all the wolves, shifters and non, howled in answer.

He circulates back inside to grab more food. When he comes out, he’s a lot closer to Alyssa than he’s been all evening, which would be awkward except that Lydia’s got her cornered. She looks predatory even though Alyssa has a good four inches on her. Derek watches them, fascinated. He’d thought - well, no, he’d assumed they were both straight. And he’d assumed Lydia had a thing for Stiles, what with them being inseparable. He leans back against the side of the house and tries not to be too obvious.

“Lydia’s always hated dishonesty,” Stiles says quietly, and Derek jumps a bit, because he hadn’t registered him coming out. He should have, what with the inescapable heartbeat.

“That doesn’t look like hatred.” Derek inclines his head to where Lydia’s trailing a perfectly manicured nail up the inside of Alyssa’s arm.

Stiles chuckles. “I can almost guarantee it’ll feel like it by morning.”

Derek shifts, reorients himself so that it’s easier to focus on Stiles. They’re basically the same height, basically the same breadth in the shoulders, but Derek’s carrying the weight of muscle that you get for being a werewolf, and Stiles is all lean. He sniffs surreptitiously. Yep, Stiles is scent-blocker-free. It’s intoxicating.

Now that he’s fallen into Stiles’ orbit, he can’t bring himself to leave. Stiles doesn’t seem to notice at first, which is almost worse than if he had, because he knows Scott and Isobel can tell. By the time fireworks are lighting up the sky, Stiles has caught on, too. Far from being put off, he starts closing the distance. Derek has no idea what’s going on. As soon as the penumbral eclipse starts, he dives for the Everclear in hopes that he’ll at least stop caring so much about having no idea what’s going on.

Boyd’s in the kitchen, lining up shot glasses into precise rows. Derek has a couple. A few. Enough that he might have felt it even without the eclipse. Still, not so many that he wasn’t immediately wary when Erica slung an arm around his neck. She leans in close enough that he’s in very real danger of inhaling her hair. “He’s got shit self-esteem and feels skeevy about being attracted to employees, never mind hitting on them. So you need to make it very, very clear that you want to go home with him.”

Derek feels himself going red to the roots of his hair.

“Oh,” says Boyd, refilling the shot glasses. “Is this the shovel talk?”

“Yep,” Erica says, popping the ‘p’ right in his ear.

Boyd smiles beatifically. “If you hurt him on purpose, we’ll disembowel you and spread you over four counties.”

“Right,” Derek says, and downs another shot. “I hear you loud and clear. I’m gonna go . . . be somewhere else.”

Erica’s “Well done, babe” is the last thing he hears on the way out the door.

He finds Stiles talking to Scott near the closed and cooling grill. “You’re really hot and I want to go home with you,” he blurts out.

“Oh, look,” Scott says, obviously trying not to laugh. “Allison, over there. Bye.”

Stiles looks thunderstruck, but he starts to smile. “Yeah?”

Derek nods, and thinks he might throw up from nerves.

“Cool,” Stiles says, and sways into his space to kiss him. He tastes like beer and barbecue, but he’s intoxicating. Derek deepens the kiss maybe faster than circumspect and maybe more than appropriate for the setting. Stiles doesn’t object, but kisses him back. “How long until you’re good to drive?”

“Uh, half an hour?”

“Great,” Stiles says. “I’m gonna make another round, and then we can go, yeah?”

Derek steals another quick kiss. “That sounds amazing.”

Stiles goes around the yard again, and Derek notes that he touches every member of his pack, something grounding under the full moon. Derek’s steady again by the time he works his way back, and takes the hand Stiles extends. “Did you drive?”

Derek shakes his head.

“Cool,” Stiles says. “You can drive my Jeep, then. I’m over on Shoreline.” He fishes out his keys and tosses them to Derek.

The Jeep is a clanging monstrosity, but it runs, which is all that matters. It doesn’t take too long to drive over to Shoreline, and he can see some of the San Francisco fireworks across the Bay. Stiles lives in a third-floor studio that is, marginally, larger than a closet. He founded basically the definitive supernatural security company, as far as Derek can tell, and he doesn’t even have a real stove. Derek blinks at him.

Stiles smiles and shrugs, toeing off his shoes. “I’m not home much. You should check out the view, though.”

“I like this view right here,” Derek says, blatantly checking Stiles out.

Stiles laughs. “God, you’re gorgeous,” he says, and crowds into Derek’s space.

He kisses Derek up against the wall, and they end up pressed together chest through knee, lining up almost perfectly. Derek brings a hand up to the back of Stiles’ head to hold him in place so he can kiss him deeper. Stiles bites Derek’s bottom lip, hard enough to sting. He breaks the kiss and strips off his own shirt, then reaches for the hem of Derek’s.

Derek strips off his shirt, then leans awkwardly back against the wall to tug off his shoes and socks. Stiles is already undoing his belt, and it feels like this is moving really fast. But Stiles is getting naked, and he smells like fate, and Derek can’t object too much to the pace. He undoes his own belt, because that’s apparently what they’re doing right now, and Stiles sinks to his knees. Derek’s knees go weak just at the sight of him in that position, and he’s uncomfortably hard.

Stiles sucks him off right there in the entryway. Eventually they move to the bed, and Derek can touch Stiles the way he wants to, taking his time. He doesn’t leave marks, because he doesn’t have permission to and he hasn’t told Stiles - anything, really. But he thoroughly enjoys leaving his scent on Stiles, knowing it will linger. Eventually, with the last light of the last fireworks fading over the Bay, Stiles fucks Derek until he sees new fireworks bloom behind his eyelids.

Derek’s just falling asleep when Stiles’ phone goes off, and he deeply resents it. Stiles groans, reaches over, and picks it up. He blinks at his phone, bleariness clearing to slow anger. He shoves the screen at Derek’s face.

Derek blinks the screen into focus. It was a corpse. Selkie, not human, from the speckling on the shoulders. Clawed or gouged open, and Derek felt sick looking.

“Why is that poor kid carved open with the same triskelion that’s on your back?”

“My uncle - we only ever found parts. He was - we - he was a mage, too, and anything that could - it wasn’t safe, anymore, not for werewolves, not with the Argents blaming us for a lot of what happened, not when the Morrells - they told us it was the best option.” He’s babbling through the explanation, but he can almost see Stiles picking out the gist: Beacon Hills is Derek’s family’s fault.

Stiles smells pissed, and his face closes off. “Right. You should go home. I need to go to Beacon Hills.”

“I -”

Stiles looks at him. He may not be an alpha, but he’s a force to be reckoned with, and meeting his eyes is hard. Derek drops his gaze and rolls out of bed. It is the most embarrassing post-coital exit he has ever had.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After last chapter’s enforcement of the universal constant of Derek not having bodily autonomy, here’s the actual point of this: what Derek might have been capable of if he grew up away from Beacon Hills and, specifically, Peter, and what it would have taken to get rid of Peter in the first place.

Derek starts to walk home in the dark. It’s a mild July night in Northern California, which means it’s perfect, and antithetical to his mood.

Getting tased is pretty much the perfect ending to the evening.

\--

Derek wakes up with a throbbing head and heavy manacles on all four limbs. It’s not great. He groans and turns his head away from the sunlight.

“He’s awake,” someone shouts from way too close.

He hears the soft scuff of loafers on concrete, and there are at least three people in the room with him. His stomach roils with tension. An asshole in a cheap suit comes to stand over him. “Clark was supposed to bring you in, but her timetable wasn’t working. So we’re moving things up, and you’re gonna help us stop some even worse monsters than you from killing real people.”

“You won’t get away with this,” Derek says, and then immediately feels stupid: they will, probably, and if they don’t it’ll be because someone will find out long long after he’s dead.

The man waits a moment. “Right. Anyway, will you cooperate, help protect people on the land your little pack is from, or do we need to knock you out again?”

“I’ll cooperate,” Derek says grudgingly. If they’re going to let him actually help with whatever killed the selkie, it’s worth cooperating with Weird Squad. And the guy has to be Weird Squad: hunters don’t wear suits.

The guy smiles thinly. “Good. That makes things easier.”

There’s an electronic whirr, and then Derek’s not chained to the floor, just in chains. Everyone takes a step back from him as he sits up, and okay, there are five of them, four of them visibly armed. They’re in a warehouse with a dirty cement floor and high windows, too far away to jump to. It looks like the kind of pseudo-abandoned that exists entirely for shady things to happen in. The spokesman nods at the lone door. “There’s an SUV through there. If you’ll get in, this can be over quickly.”

Derek does what he’s told. Derek usually does what he’s told. If he tried to fight them, they’d just hurt him, and it wouldn’t accomplish anything. He gets shuffled to the middle of the back seat, armed men on either side of him. He smells wolfsbane. They drive from what looks like a rundown industrial district through a small town that is definitely not in the Bay Area, and he wonders where they Hell they’ve taken him. Oh, but it’s obvious, and he makes the connection at the same time as they pass the Beacon Hills Public Library, confirming it. The chains on his wrists rattle as the SUV goes over a pothole.

They drive out the other side of town, past a sign that says Beacon Hills Preserve. There’s a barricade on the service road the SUV turns onto, and Derek tenses. An older man in the tan uniform of county law enforcement steps up to the driver’s window. What the hell are the Weird Squad going to do to this guy?

“Now, I know you’re feds, Davis, but there’ve been a lot of animal attacks in these woods. They might not cover this in the big city, but we tend to recommend that you avoid the big man-eaters and let Park Services handle it.”

Derek breathes in and smells Stilinski and woods and something rotting in the most malevolent way possible. Oh no, this is Stiles’ dad. Shit. What’s he going to do if they shoot him? What can he do? Stiles is never going to forgive him.

The spokesman - Davis - smiles thinly from the passenger seat. “Oh, we’ll be fine, Sheriff. We brought in a consultant.”

The Sheriff glances over Derek and the two agents in the back seat. “Uh-huh.”

There’s a subtle nudge to his side - they want him to answer, and Derek could laugh from how perfect it is. He plasters on a smile. “Derek Hale, of Clarke Security Technologies. These gentlemen think this is the kind of problem I can help with.”

The Sheriff’s eyes sharpen, and his scent goes hot and predatory and angry. He remains otherwise impassive. “Right, whatever. I’ll have Park Services come after you if you’re not back by tonight.” He slaps a hand to the side of the car door and steps away to move the barrier.

Derek tries not to be too obvious in his relief. These assholes must have majorly skimped on their research, or they overlook humans and their connections. Did Alyssa really think that Stiles wasn’t in this to his eyeballs, that he’d have told his father nothing? Stiles might not care all that much about Derek as a person, but he’s probably already here, and his dad will probably tell him what’s going on, and then he might get rescued. Though on the other hand - what can he really expect Stiles to do on his own? His best option is still to follow through on what they ask of him and hope they don’t disappear him to some lab after.

The service road gives you, and the driver stops. “Okay,” Davis says. “Derek, you’ll follow me through the woods. Any aggressive or sudden moves and you get tasered. Understood?”

Derek nods tightly. “I understand.”

The woods they’re walking through should be verdant, or at least the golden green of dry summer. They’re not, though. There’s some green struggling through, but mostly the leaves are sickly, stripped of color. Derek has no idea what would cause it. There’s a prickling of wrongness on his skin, from more than just the persistent threat at his back.

He can hear water in the distance, the trickling of some small river. He doesn’t remember much from when his family lived here; mostly remembers things through stories he’s heard since. Turmoil and death and violence on multiple fronts, soul-rot at the heart of it. The river barely came up, was just where they’d found most of his uncle, and the way they’d found him had been more a part of the story than the where. Beacon Hills has a nemeton - the sound of a river shouldn’t be what sends a chill down his spine.

The woods open wider, into a clearing that borders the water. It looks like it must be well-travelled, to have short grass and no trees taking up the valuable waterside real estate, but it smells like nothing but earth and water and rot.

Davis stops short. “Derek, if you’d step closer to the water?”

It feels like if they wanted him to identify something they’d have told him by now and if they wanted him to fight something they’d be taking off the chains. He probably should have asked questions earlier, even though they likely wouldn’t have told him. He steps slowly towards the water. There’s a darker semi-circle close to the edge. He furrows his brows at it. Is it some kind of track?

“Now,” Davis snaps, and there’s an impact behind him that also feels like an impact to his entire body.

Derek whirls, and there’s a small bag on the ground, black powder spilling free. They’ve trapped him in mountain ash. “I thought you wanted my help with something.”

Davis’ smile is thin enough to cut. “And you’re being very helpful. Since what’s in the river is apparently after your bloodline, you’re going to help us lure it out.”

One of the men who’d ridden with Derek in the back seat raises his gun and shoots him. Derek falls backwards with the force of it, hits the wall created by the mountain ash, and slides to the ground. Numbly, he brings a hand up to his shoulder. His fingers come away red. “You shot me!”

He’s never been shot before. It hurts a lot. He puts his hand back to his shoulder to try to stem the bleeding, and his heartbeat echoes in his ears, panic-fast.

Davis is ignoring him, giving crisp orders about nets and tranq guns and tasers. Derek realizes, with a sinking feeling, that all he is is bait, and they don’t even need to leave him alive for that. Hale blood in the water, and his usefulness is done. Or even, it turns out, just Hale blood in the air. He hears the water churning behind him, and twists to look.

It’s a small river. Maybe four feet wide, clear enough that he can tell it’s only a few feet deep. Wadeable. Not nearly the volume of water running through it to churn up a mass ten feet high and filled with mud and slime and rot. It makes a sibilant noise that’s entirely too sentient for Derek’s liking and surges towards the shore. Derek scrabbles back in the circle, trying to get as far away from it as he can. It’s going to fucking swallow him whole. His pulse is thundering in his ears, but with a lurch he realizes that’s only half of it - Stiles is close, coming closer.

The fetid mass can’t cross the mountain ash any more than Derek can, and it skirts him, aiming now for the Weird Squad. They fire a net at it, a weighted one from one of those guns, and it passes right through the creature, hitting Derek squarely in the wounded shoulder and covering him in - stuff. Gross stuff.

Davis himself is the one who fires a taser at it, and that, at least, hits. Lightning sparks inside the thing, and Derek can see grass wither around it, but it doesn’t even slow. They’re going to die here and then this monster’s going to get Stiles and Derek’s going to die of a stupid fucking gunshot wound. Shouldn’t it have healed already?

The Weird Squad have resorted to sidearms and backing away quickly, as much good as it’s doing them. Derek’s never even heard of a monster like this. Stiles is still coming closer, and Derek wants to scream at him to stay away. He slams helplessly on the barrier of mountain ash. If he could just get out, he could at least claw out some of the stuff giving the monster shape. Maybe? He’d be able to do something. He can hear Stiles not a hundred yards away, nearly in eyeline and range of the Weird Squad. “Stiles, run!”

“Ignite,” is what passes for a reply, and a fireball crackles through the woods to hit the river monster.

It starts steaming, and changes course, heading right for Stiles. Who can throw fireballs. Which shouldn’t be hot, especially not at a time like this,  especially when it wasn’t effective. Derek presses harder on the barrier. Maybe some of the trail of dampness that the monster has left will have weakened the seal.

Stiles comes into view, wearing jeans and and a plaid shirt and a vicious expression. “You useless motherfuckers,” he spits, and Derek thinks for a moment he means him. But no, he’s talking to the Weird Squad. “Picking fights you’re not prepared for and running away and leaving hostages is exactly why you’re douchebags. Either stay and help or go get arrested back at your SUV.”

The river monster doesn’t care about the logistics of this fight, or who’s participating on purpose. It crashes down on an agent who’d been too slow. The water’s murky and dark, but not so murky nor so dark that everyone can’t see exactly what happens to him. The other agents break into a dead run. Stiles doesn’t. He says “Ignite” again and throws another fireball that does nothing.

He’s Derek’s mate and he may not love him but he’s _his mate_  and he’s going to die horribly right in front of Derek because Derek’s trapped by _dust_. Derek pushes against the barrier, and something must have weakened it, because there’s some give to it, like he’s pressing against a heavy rubber sheet. It makes his shoulder scream with pain and redoubles the rate of bleeding, but he keeps pressing. Stiles isn’t running, and Derek has to at least try. The river monster is bare feet from him, but Stiles still isn’t running, and with a last desperate surge Derek breaks through.

It feels like there’s fire in his blood, more than just from the shoulder, and it wants him to howl. He doesn’t, though, just leaps for the river monster, claws out.

Predictably, he sinks in, and the last thing he sees before his head is swallowed is the shocked expression on Stiles’ face.

\--

There’s no sensation of being torn limb from limb. No watery choking.

Inside the river monster, Derek stops hurting, and feels completely dry. He’s standing in a white room that stretches forever in all directions, standing across a broad stump from a man who looks like he can’t be older than 20. He’s all cheekbones and smug jawline and he smells like pack.

“So one of you finally came back for me.”

“Who are you?”

The man’s eyes slit in a sudden onset of rage that sends home the fact that this is some human avatar of the monster that’s been killing people, that almost just killed Stiles, that’s probably killing him in some way he can’t feel right now.

“Peter Hale.”

Derek gapes at him. “No, you can’t be. Peter died more than twenty years ago.”

“Not completely,” he roars, and his breath smells like dead things and the sound of his voice echoes here unpleasantly. The man - Peter - puts on a calmer face the way Derek’s seen Cora put on glitter eyeshadow: fast, opaque, and obviously fake. He clasps his hands behind his back and starts pacing on his side of the stump. “Deucalion - objected, shall we say, to certain of my activities. Kali objected to my engineering of what happened to Deucalion.” He smiled at Derek chillingly. “You should be happy to know it took two alphas to take down a beta Hale. You’ll be unstoppable. Of course, I had measures put in place, but your mother, of all people, prevented some of them. I was reduced to fashioning myself a body from inferior materials and waiting for the nemeton to bring me what I needed. It never did. It kept drawing in inferior tools and creatures with their own agendas, and keeping myself all in one piece was all I could do. Now, though, you willingly sacrifice yourself, and give me an alpha body with my own blood and only a little bit of wolfsbane in it? I can reclaim what Beacon Hills should have been all along.”

Derek is confused, but not so much that he thinks Peter being back in the land of the living is a good idea, much less letting him _have_  Derek’s body. “How about no,” he says, thinking about the man his mother talked about and how he bears no resemblance to this cartoon villain. He is very, very certain that his mother would rather keep her son than get back a sorry excuse for a brother.

Peter’s face twists, and he launches himself over the stump, shifting out claws as he goes. Derek goes on the defensive. He’s not a good fighter, but he thinks the fact that he’s actually had a body these last twenty-odd years works in his favor. He’s stronger and faster than Peter, he can tell. This hellish vacant place also makes it feel like he can push his transformation farther, get to the full shift he’s only ever managed with his whole pack right there supporting him. Peter gets in a solid hit, sending Derek flying. Derek twists in midair, shifts and turns inside his skin, and lands on four paws. He growls, as menacing as he can, and Peter laughs.

Peter spreads his arms, somehow drawing darkness to him from this bright shadowless emptiness. Derek doesn’t know what it’ll do, but he knows he can’t wait. He has to be sure now. And he is. No time to think about it, just do what has to be done. It’s easier as a wolf. He leaps for Peter’s throat and clamps down his teeth. Peter falls backwards under his weight, and Derek rides him to the floor, teeth tight around his neck. Peter makes a choked noise, but he shouldn’t make any noise, so Derek bites down harder and _shakes_.

The world starts to fade. Pain creeps back - kind of a lot of it. Cold and wet press into his skin, and the world is made of blood and slime and terror. Derek thinks he might be dead until he hears a soft, “Holy shit.”

Derek staggers to his feet, and the river monster is nothing but a pile of rotting weeds and fish and meat and mud. The clearing is wet. Stiles is standing there soaked but otherwise unharmed.

Derek shakes himself off, and it registers sort of dimly that that actually worked, and he’s on four feet instead of two. Which means that things from that terrible room were true, and he killed his uncle.

“Derek?” Stiles sounds hesitant.

Derek shifts back, and it’s both easier and harder than usual. There’s so much more raw power there, but he’s also - right, still shot and poisoned and bleeding. “It’s over,” he says, and collapses.

\--

When Derek regains consciousness, he’s no longer lying in the remains of his dead uncle, the monster. So that’s a plus. He’s lying on dry grass beneath a tree, and he’s still naked, but he’s got a blanket. It smells kind of antiseptic. That probably means there are professionals here to handle the mess. The thoroughly supernatural mess. Shit. He sits up abruptly, and notes that it doesn’t hurt and he isn’t bleeding anymore. Scott and Allison are standing with Stiles and the Sheriff and a man about the Sheriff’s age, but with more guns, and they’re talking about laying blame on mountain lions. Scott glances over at Derek’s movement and waves jauntily.

The group of them start walking over, and Derek would stand up and meet them in the middle, but he’s naked under the blanket and he’s pretty sure he almost died, so he stays where he is aside from making sure the blanket’s secure around his waist.

“Show me your eyes,” demands the man Derek’s never seen before, and now that he’s close Derek can smell the wolfsbane on him. He does as he’s told.

“I told you! Why does no one ever believe me?” Stiles crosses his arms, bare now because he’s wearing just a fresh T-shirt.

The Sheriff pats him on the shoulder. “We believe you, son. We just have a hard time with how weird reality gets around you.”

“What?” Derek has no idea what’s going on.

Scott grins at him. “Welcome to the true alpha club, bro.”

“What?!”

Stiles rolls his eyes, seemingly fed up with catching people up. “Dude, you broke through a solid mountain ash barrier because you thought the monster was going to eat me, your eyes went red, and then you turned into a full wolf after you murdered it from the inside. Considering I’m pretty sure that thing was a major part of what kept bringing freaky shit to town, how is it a surprise you had to be an alpha to bring it down?”

Derek brings up his knees and sticks his face in the blanket between them, because he can’t breathe. Being an alpha means he can’t go home, not the same way, not ever again. He might lose his job. He has no pack now. He has no idea how to be an alpha. And true alphas are supposed to be rare - so rare. He’d just seen his mate in trouble and needed to go to him. That wouldn’t make him a true alpha.

Stiles sighs. “Give us a minute?”

Derek crowds closer to the nearest tree, because of course he wants to give Stiles the space he wants, he’s just not sure he can _breathe_.

Then Stiles is sitting on the ground next to him, resting his hand on Derek’s shoulder. His presence is soothing enough that Derek regains the ability to breathe relatively quickly. He looks up at Stiles. Stiles smiles wryly at him. “You know, we try not to spend all our weekends like this anymore.”

Derek barks out a laugh. “Oh my God, your lives are terrible.” He takes a carefully measured breath, because this is still - okay, priorities. “The monster was my uncle Peter. He wasn’t quite as dead as we thought he was. I think I finished the job, though.”

Stiles’ hand tightens on his shoulder, then he leans into Derek in wordless sympathy.

Which, okay, that’s the other thing that needs to come up. Full disclosure is humiliating. “And I think I could only break through the barrier because you’re my mate.”

Stiles stiffens and pulls away slightly, and Derek hurries to further explain, to get the whole thing out. “I think that’s why the kappa could smell me on you, not proximity, I just couldn’t - I mean, I didn’t want to make it weird? But I can hear your heartbeat all the time and you smell amazing and I’m probably not a real alpha.”

Stiles is still for a moment. “Okay.” He falls silent again, gathering his thoughts. “I can understand why you didn’t tell me, but you really should have. Any other surprises likely to come out of that?”

“No idea,” Derek mumbles to his knees, then chances a glance up at Stiles.

Stiles is staring out at the woods, but he nods absently. “Right. Okay. Want to come to Trivia Night?”

Derek blinks at him. “What?” He seems to be saying that a lot.

Stiles still doesn’t look at him. “I don’t . . . date. Not really. And weird werewolf stuff isn’t really a reason to jump into anything? So we should do, like, dating lite, since I’m assuming that’s what you’d want to do? And I like Trivia Night, and it’s fun, and pretty low key. So. Trivia Night.”

Derek smiles, joy lighting him up and chasing away the last of the chill. “I’d like that. I’d say you should text me the details, but I’m pretty sure I left my phone in the underworld.”

Stiles snorts out a laugh. “I really, really wish that was the first time I’d heard that.” He unfolds himself off the ground and holds out a hand to Derek, who takes it, careful to keep the blanket in place.

Wrapping the blanket around him like a skirt still leaves it kind of precarious, so Derek holds it in place as they walk to the rest of the group.

The Sheriff shakes his head. “Son, there’s sweats in the trunk of my cruiser. Go grab a pair. Sorry, Derek, they’re gonna smell weird, but probably better than trying to stay decent in the blanket.”

“Yes, sir,” Derek says.

“I have shovels,” the stranger says, and it’s very abrupt and not a little disturbing. “Allison, let’s get them and bags so we can get rid of some of the more suspicious debris.”

“Sure, Dad,” she says, and smiles at Derek before she turns away.

The Sheriff rolls his eyes, looking momentarily exactly like his son. “I’m going to go help them,” he says, and strolls along in their wake.

That leaves Derek alone with Scott. “I’d - I’d understand if you want me to leave.”

Scott shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

“Two alphas -”

“I don’t have a problem with you, Derek. Honestly, we’d probably be good for each other - you can tell me the werewolf traditions I’ve been fucking up for a decade, I can show you how to be a true alpha. Besides, I have ancient werewolf wisdom that says this is permissible.”

Derek raises an eyebrow, because he is damn sure true alphas aren’t common enough for this to be a thing that there’s _any_  recorded wisdom about this particular situation.

Scott gets out his phone and taps several times, keeping it angled away from Derek. When he turns it so Derek can see, it’s the Notes app, with ‘ancient werewolf wisdom:’ at the top, and a second line that just says ‘I do what I want.’

Derek laughs until there are tears in his eyes.

Behind him, the river runs clear.


End file.
